This comment was posted first on this thread by Zeddicus Zul Zorander
Actually, I think that is a legitimate question: Why haven’t people repeated the Parkhomov experiment successfully yet? I had expected more successful replications but nothing so far has succeeded. So what is the problem? I can think of a couple of answers:
– Nobody has done a 100% exact replication of Parkhomov’s setup. An exact replication of what Parkhomov did would be preferred, simply to see if his setup can be replicated.
– Parkhomov stumbled upon a parameter he hasn’t identified but which is crucial to the setup. Possibly he did something or prepared his reactor in a way he didn’t think important but that may be a key factor we just don’t know.
– Parkhomov’s experiment wasn’t a success in the first place, although the ash analysis seems to disprove that.
Personally, I’m thinking the process just is not as simple as the key ingredients suggest. A really specific set of circumstances has to be set in motion before the process will begin. Also the use of the materials is crucial as we are working at the limit of allowed temperatures for those materials. Then the right pressures and specific stages of hydrogen absorption into the nickel matrix are crucial. Any failure for instance of a material at those temperatures, the failure to prepare the nickel surface correctly or the wrong type of “dirty” power probably leads to the failure of an experiment.
Still, knowledge of LENR is slowly building and the chance of someone getting it right are increasing all the time as more and more people get involved, so I hope and at the moment am quite confident we will have a successful LENR experiment soon.